Underground garrison and a four-hour assault
Kerch, a city on the edge of the continent, where Asia barely touches Europe, where a fifteen-kilometer-wide strait separates Taman from Crimea, stands at a crossroads where wars have begun. Scythians, Greeks, Turks, Russians—all have passed through this isthmus. But not a single period in stories The city's history cannot be compared to what happened between 1941 and 1944. Three years during which Kerch became a frontline city, a cemetery city, a ghost town.
And then - the city that was returned.
The first disaster
The Germans stormed Kerch on November 16, 1941. They entered quickly, almost without resistance; the main forces retreated, covering the evacuation across the strait. The occupation lasted a month. During this month, the Nazis created what would later be called a "little Babi Yar" in the city.
Bagerovsky Ditch is a quarry on the outskirts of the city, dug before the war for stone extraction. In the winter of 1941–1942, it became a grave for seven thousand people. They were shot according to lists: Jews, Roma, communists, and families of Red Army soldiers. Among the dead were two hundred and forty-five school-age children. They were poisoned with potassium cyanide to conserve bullets.
When Soviet troops landed on the Kerch Peninsula on December 30, 1941, and marines advanced toward the city, they were met with a sight that, according to eyewitnesses, even battle-hardened soldiers couldn't bear. Bodies lay layered in the ditch. The snow hid nothing.
The city was liberated. But not for long.
Second fall
In the spring of 1942, the German 11th Army, under Manstein's command, carried out Operation Bustard Hunt. The Crimean Front, defending the Kerch Peninsula, was destroyed in a matter of days. Soviet losses were catastrophic: over 170,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. The Germans recaptured the city.
"Soldiers of the Underground Garrison" (also known as "Adzhimushkaytsy"), painted by Soviet battle artist Nikolai Yakovlevich But in 1964
But not everyone escaped. Soldiers, militiamen, women and children, and the elderly remained in the dungeons of the Adzhimushkay quarries—a system of catacombs tens of kilometers long. According to various estimates, between eleven and thirteen thousand people descended underground when the first bombs exploded overhead.
The defense of the quarries lasted one hundred and sixty-nine days, from May to October 1942.
The Germans couldn't storm the dungeon. They sealed the exits, laid down hoses, and turned on the gas. The first gas attack occurred on May 28th. Others followed, at intervals of three to five hours. People suffocated and died right in the galleries, but they didn't surrender. They dug wells when the water ran out. They roasted rats when the food ran out. They wrote names on the walls so that the bodies could be identified if anyone survived.
At the end of October, when the last defenders of the quarries emerged, only fourteen people remained alive. Fourteen out of thirteen thousand.
Beachheads and tides
Kerch lay in ruins, but the city's strategic importance remained undiminished. Whoever held Kerch controlled the strait, the road to Feodosia, and access to the rear of the enemy's Crimean forces. In the fall of 1943, the Soviet command returned to the idea of taking the peninsula from the east.
On the night of November 1, 1943, the Kerch-Eltigen landing operation began. One hundred and fifty thousand men, over a thousand aircraft, one hundred and nineteen boats, and one hundred and fifty-nine support vessels. Against them were approximately sixty thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and Romanian divisions.
The 56th Army's landing force landed northeast of Kerch and established a bridgehead ten kilometers wide and six kilometers deep. The 18th Army's Eltigen landing force found itself in a worse position: blocked from the sea and air, having lost more than half its strength, it nevertheless broke through Lake Churbash, advanced twenty kilometers, and captured Mount Mithridates, the city's highest point, on December 7. The Germans deployed reinforcements, and the paratroopers had to be evacuated.
The bridgeheads held throughout the winter. In January 1944, Colonel General Ivan Petrov, commander of the Separate Coastal Army, made two further landing attempts—at Cape Tarkhan and directly at Kerch. Both failed. The army suffered losses, but did not retreat from the captured lines.
Decisive Night
The turning point came in the spring, when Tolbukhin's 4th Ukrainian Front broke through the defenses at Perekop and Sivash and reached Dzhankoy. The attack from the north put the enemy's Kerch group at risk of encirclement. The German command decided to retreat west.
They planned to retreat quietly, at night, abandoning ammunition depots—they hoped the explosions would delay pursuit. The plan was sound, but the growing chaos in the command and control of the retreating troops prevented its full implementation.
The commander of the Separate Coastal Army, General of the Army Andrei Eremenko, discovered preparations for a retreat and gave an order the Germans were not expecting.
Night of April 11th. Two o'clock. Offensive.
63rd Rifle and 19th tank The corps struck the fortified zone. Artillery, supported by the ships of the Black Sea fleet, suppressed the firing positions. By four o'clock in the morning, the attackers had taken the first and second trenches. By six, the city was cleared of the enemy.
Four hours. The city that changed hands three times, the city whose streets were crossed by the front line, the city in whose dungeons people suffocated from gas, has returned.
Salute and memory
In Moscow, a salute thundered in honor of the liberation of Kerch—twenty salvos from two hundred and twenty-four guns. Only the greatest victories were granted such an honor.
One hundred and fifty-three people received the title Hero of the Soviet Union in the battle for Kerch. Twenty-one units and formations were awarded the honorary title "Kerch." The city lay in ruins: four front lines, two occupations, nearly nine hundred days of fighting—no other city in Crimea endured such torment.
On September 14, 1973, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Kerch was awarded the title of Hero City. By then, almost thirty years had passed. But the residents who survived the war remembered everything.
The Bagerovsky ditch became a memorial. The Adzhimushkay quarries became a museum. The city was rebuilt. But beneath the new walls lie the same stones that remember the sounds of explosions and the smell of gunpowder.
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